•"*  LIBRARY  ^ 

UNIVCKSITY  OP 
CALIFORNIA        I 


pv 

/03 
.64- 


TWO     LECTURES 


INTRODUCTORY    TO    THE 


tLonDon:  C.  J.  CLAY  AND  SONS, 
CAMBRIDGE   UNIVERSITY   PRESS   WAREHOUSE, 

AVE    MARIA    LANE. 
•ESlnsgoto:   50,  WELLINGTON   STREET. 


Etipjig:    F.    A.    BROCKHAUS. 
gorfc:    THE   MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 
ISombap:   E.  SEYMOUR  HALE. 


TWO    LECTURES 


INTRODUCTORY   TO   THE 


STUDY  OF  POETRY 


BY  THE 

REV.  H.  C.  BEECHING   M.A. 

LATE   CLARK    LECTURER   AT   TRINITY   COLLEGE,    CAMBRIDGE, 

PROFESSOR   OF    PASTORAL   THEOLOGY   AT   KING'S   COLLEGE,   LONDON, 

CHAPLAIN    TO   THE   HON.    SOC.    OF   LINCOLN'S   INN. 


CAMBRIDGE: 

AT  THE   UNIVERSITY   PRESS. 

1901 

[All  Rights  reserved.} 


Cambridge : 

PRINTED    BY  J.    AND  C.    F.   CLAY, 
AT   THE   UNIVERSITY    PRESS. 


PASSION    AND    IMAGINATION 
IN    POETRY. 

THE  unsatisfactoriness  of  definitions  of  poetry 
arises  usually  from  one  or  other  of  two  causes. 
If  the  definition  is  that  of  a  critic,  it  is  the 
resultant  of  a  long  analytical  process,  and  there- 
fore not  very  intelligible  apart  from  the  process 
by  which  it  has  been  arrived  at;  if  it  is  the 
definition  of  a  poet,  it  is  certain  to  contain  that 
element  of  poetry  which  it  professes  to  explain. 
Nevertheless,  the  most  helpful  aper$us  into  poetry 
are  those  which  the  poets  themselves  have  given 
us,  and  of  them  all  none  is  more  helpful  than 
that  inspired  parenthesis  in  which  Milton  one 
day  summed  up  its  characteristics  as  "simple, 
sensuous,  and  passionate." 

B.  i 


2    Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry. 

We  may  presume  that  by  his  first  epithet 
Milton  intended  that  simplicity  which  is  another 
name  for  sincerity.  He  meant  that  a  poet  must 
look  at  the  world  frankly  and  with  open  eyes  ; 
with  the  spirit,  though  with  more  than  the 
wisdom,  of  a  child.  We  sometimes  express 
another  side  of  the  same  truth  by  saying  that 
poetry  is  "  universal,"  meaning  that  it  cares 
nothing  for  superficial  and  transient  fashions, 
but  is  interested  only  "  in  man,  in  nature,  and 
in  human  life,"  in  their  permanent  elements. 
This  first  epithet  seems  to  fix  beyond  dispute 
an  indispensable  quality  of  all  poetry.  If  a 
writer  is  insincere,  or  if  he  is  conventional  and 
fashionable,  we  are  sure,  whatever  his  airs  and 
graces,  that  he  is  no  poet.  By  "  sensuous "  it 
is  probable  that  Milton  meant  what,  in  more 
technical  language,  we  should  describe  as  "  con- 
crete." Poetry  deals  with  things,  and  it  deals 
with  people ;  it  sings  of  birds  and  flowers  and 
stars  ;  it  sings  of  the  wrath  of  Achilles,  the 
wanderings  of  Ulysses  and  ^Eneas,  the  woes  of 


Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry.    3 

King  CEdipus,  the  problems  of  Brutus  and 
Hamlet ;  whatever  be  the  thought  or  the  emo- 
tion it  is  concerned  with,  it  is  concerned  with 
them  as  operating  on  a  particular  occasion  ;  it 
has  no  concern  with  the  intellect  or  the  emotions 
or  the  will  in  abstraction  from  this  or  that  wise 
or  passionate  or  wilful  person1.  By  his  third 
epithet  Milton,  as  most  will  agree,  touched,  or 
almost  touched,  the  heart  of  the  matter.  We 
all  conceive  prose  to  be  an  adequate  vehicle  for 
our  level  feelings,  but  as  soon  as  we  are  deeply 
moved  and  wish  to  express  our  emotion  we 
instinctively  turn  to  the  poets.  Wordsworth  is 
at  one  with  Milton  in  fixing  upon  passion  as 


1  The  tradition  of  this  concreteness  was  not  lost  even  in  the 
eighteenth  century.  Poets,  living  in  a  time  of  abstract  thought, 
and  feeling  under  the  necessity  of  handling  abstractions,  hit  upon 
the  device  of  personifying  them,  with  the  result  that  from  the 
pages  of  Dodsley's  Miscellany  every  faculty  of  the  mind  and  every 
operation  of  every  science  looks  out  at  one  with  a  capital  letter, 
a  fashion  happily  parodied  in  the  famous  line  : 

"  Inoculation,  heavenly  maid,  descend." 

Gray  is  not  untouched  with  the  malady,  though,  on  the  whole, 
he  represents  a  reaction  back  to  the  richness  of  the  concrete, 
the  "  pomp  and  prodigality  "  of  Shakespeare  and  Milton. 


4    Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry. 

of  the  essence  of  poetry,  which  he  in  one  place 
defines  as  "  the  spontaneous  overflow  of  power- 
ful feelings."  It  does  not  matter  for  poetry 
what  the  emotion  is  that  overflows ;  it  may  be 
love  or  hate,  pity  or  fear,  awe  or  indignation,  joy 
or  sorrow  ;  what  matters  for  poetry  is  that  some 
passion  there  should  be,  for  some  particular 
object,  and  that  it  should  be  sincerely  and  deeply 
felt. 

Essential,  however,  as  passion  is,  so  that 
where  there  is  no  passion  there  can  be  no 
poetry,  in  saying  passion  we  have  not  said  the 
last  word.  Anyone  may  prove  this  to  himself 
by  a  simple  reminiscence.  He  may  at  some 
time  have  been  in  love,  for,  according  to  Pat- 
more,  "  Love  wakes  men  once  a  lifetime  each  "  ; 
and,  perhaps,  in  a  mood  of  exaltation  he  may 
have  taken  pen  and  paper  for  a  sonnet  to  his 
mistress'  eyebrow  ;  but  the  poetry  did  not  come ; 
or,  if  something  came,  in  a  calmer  mood  he 
recognized  that  it  was  not  poetry.  Or  we  may 
illustrate  from  other  passions.  At  the  Queen's 


Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry.    5 

Jubilee  a  few  years  since  we  were  all  passionately 
loyal,  and  the  morning  newspapers  vied  with 
each  other  in  producing  odes  ;  but  no  one  could 
mistake  any  one  of  them  for  poetry.  Or,  the 
other  day,  again,  when  the  Rennes  verdict  was 
announced,  the  intelligence  of  England  was 
roused  to  a  passion  of  indignation.  I  took  up 
my  weekly  gazette  the  next  Saturday  morning 
and  found  that  indignation  had  made  a  good 
many  verses,  in  none  of  which  was  there  a  tinc- 
ture of  poetry.  There  was  much  cursing  and 
swearing,  and  appealing  to  Heaven  for  ven- 
geance ;  but  the  point  of  view  was  merely  that 
of  "the  man  in  the  street." 

These  simple  examples  will  suffice  to  show 
that  poetry  requires  a  manner  of  viewing  things 
which  is  not  that  of  the  average  man,  but  is 
individual  to  the  poet ;  it  requires,  in  a  word, 
genius.  One  could  hardly  expect  Milton  to 
point  this  out ;  having  genius  himself  he  would 
assume  that  everyone  else  had  genius  ;  he  would 
assume  that  we  all  had  the  power  of  looking  at 


6    Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry. 


the  world  not  only  frankly  but  freshly,  because 
he  would  not  understand  any  other  way  of 
looking  at  it.  Now,  it  is  this  fresh  outlook  and 
insight,  this  power  of  viewing  things  and  people 
out  of  the  associations  in  which  the  rest  of  man- 
kind habitually  view  them,  that  is  the  root  of 
the  whole  matter.  In  the  world  of  nature  we 
find  the  poets  moved  even  to  passion  by  objects 
that  we  hardly  notice,  or  from  long  familiarity 
have  come  to  ignore.  Their  strong  emotion 
arises  from  their  fresh  vision.  By  means  of  that 
fresh  vision  the  world  never  ceases  to  be  an  in- 
teresting place  to  them. 

"  By  the  murmur  of  a  spring, 
Or  the  least  bough's  rustling, 
By  a  daisy  whose  leaves  spread 
Shut  when  Titan  goes  to  bed, 
Or  a  shady  bush  or  tree, 
She  could  more  infuse  in  me 
Than  all   Nature's  beauties  can 
In  some  other  wiser  man." 

So  sang  Wither  of  the  Poetic  Muse ;  and 
Blake  expresses  the  same  truth  in  his  inspired 
doggrel : 


Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry.    7 

"What  to  others  a  trifle  appears 
Fills  me  full  of  smiles  and  tears." 

The  converse  of  the  proposition  also  holds  true : 
what  to  others  may  appear  facts  of  the  highest 
importance,  may  to  the  poet  appear  trifles. 
Similarly  in  the  world  of  men  we  find  the  poets 
as  much  interested  in  the  least  as  in  the  greatest, 
and  we  find  them  unconcerned  by  many  of  the 
distinctions  which  to  mankind  in  general  appear 
vital.  We  find,  for  example,  Andrew  Marvell 
introducing  into  his  panegyric  of  Oliver  Pro- 
tector a  picture  of  King  Charles  at  his  execution, 
which  embalms  the  secret  of  all  the  cavalier 
loyalty,  and  is  to-day  the  oftenest  quoted  pas- 
sage of  his  poem. 

The  poet's  subjects,  then,  are  borrowed  from 
any  quarter  in  the  whole  range  of  nature  and 
human  experience;  "the  world  is  all  before  him 
where  to  choose";  anything  that  excites  any 
deep  emotion  in  him  is  a  fit  topic  for  his  verse, 
and  it  is  our  privilege  for  the  moment,  so  far 
as  that  one  experience  is  concerned,  to  look 


8    Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry. 

through  his  eyes.  In  this  way  the  poets  interpret 
the  world  to  us.  They  also  interpret  us  to  our- 
selves. They  make  adventurous  voyages  into 
hitherto  unsounded  seas  of  the  human  spirit, 
and  bring  us  word  of  their  discoveries.  And 
what  they  thus  win  becomes  an  inalienable 
possession  to  the  race ;  the  boundaries  of  hu- 
manity are  pushed  back.  This  power  of  inter- 
preting the  world  and  human  life  is  sometimes 
spoken  of  as  an  idealizing  faculty,  and  no  ex- 
ception can  be  taken  to  the  term  so  long  as 
it  is  not  explained  to  mean  that  the  poet  tricks 
up  what  he  sees  in  false  lights  in  order  to  please 
us.  For  anyone  who  considers  the  best  poetry, 
whether  about  the  universe  or  man's  heart, — 
and  it  is  only  the  best  that  must  determine 
the  genus — will  admit  that,  so  far  as  he  has 
trusted  himself  to  it,  it  has  convinced  him  of 
its  entire  veracity.  It  is  idealized  only  in  the 
sense  that  a  landscape  is  idealized  by  the  re- 
moval of  the  accidental  and  commonplace  details, 
which  sufficed  to  blind  others  to  the  beauty  that 


Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry.    9 

the  painter  distinguished.  The  artist,  poet  or 
painter,  sees  the  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or 
land  until  he  saw  it ;  but  when  he  has  once  seen 
it  and  shown  it  us,  we  can  all  see  that  it  is  there, 
and  is  not  merely  a  figment  of  his  fancy.  This 
mode  of  viewing  things,  which  by  its  freshness 
reveals,  or  interprets,  or  idealizes,  is  what  is  meant 
by  Poetical  Imagination. 

But  now  that  that  most  terrifying  of  tech- 
nical terms  has  been  mentioned,  it  may  be  well 
to  make  a  short  summary  of  the  various  senses 
in  which  the  word  is  habitually  employed,  in 
order  to  observe  what  all,  or  any,  of  them  have 
in  common,  and  how  they  connect  one  with 
another. 

(a)  When  a  psychologist  speaks  of  imagi- 
nation he  is  not  thinking  of  poetry  ;  he  means 
by  the  word  the  power  of  summoning  again 
before  the  mind's  eye  vivid  images  of  what  has 
been  once  seen.  He  bids  us  look  carefully  at 
our  breakfast-table,  and  then,  closing  our  eyes, 
notice  how  much  of  it  we  can  recall,  how  clear 


io  Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry. 

or  dim  an  image.  Whether  skill  in  this  memory- 
picturing  has  any  link  with  poetical  imagination 
it  would  be  hard  to  say  ;  certainly  to  no  one 
would  a  power  of  vividly  recalling  images  be 
of  greater  service.  The  faculty  seems  to  be 
entirely  distinct  from  the  power  of  attention 
and  close  observation. 

(b)  A  more  familiar  usage  of  the  word  is 
that  which  makes  it  almost  a  synonym  for 
sympathy — the  power  of  projecting  self  into 
the  circumstances  of  others.  We  know  to  our 
cost  that  many  men  and  women  are  sadly  to 
seek  in  this  faculty,  and  it  seems  to  be  no 
especial  prerogative  of  poets,  though  Shelley 
thought  so.  He  speaks  of  the  poet  as — 

"  A  nerve  o'er  which  do  creep 
The  else  unfelt  oppressions  of  the  earth." 

And  in  his  prose  essay  he  says :  "A  man  to 
be  greatly  good  must  imagine  intensely  and 
comprehensively ;  he  must  put  himself  in  the 
place  of  another,  and  of  many  others ;  the 
pains  and  pleasures  of  his  species  must  become 


Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry.   1 1 

his  own";  and  he  continues,  "The  great  instru- 
ment of  moral  good  is  imagination,  and  poetry 
administers  to  the  effect  by  acting  upon  the 
cause"  (Essays,  I.  16).  Shelley  in  this  passage 
is  theorizing  too  much  from  his  own  personal 
feelings  ;  for  it  has  often  been  remarked  that 
poets  have  been  singularly  lacking  in  imagina- 
tion of  this  moral  sort,  and  some  have  been 
conspicuous  for  an  intense  selfishness  in  their 
domestic  relations. 

(c)  But  the  word  is  also  used  not  of  moral, 
but  of  intellectual,  sympathy ;  a  power  of  appre- 
ciating, by  an  act  of  intuition,  the  characteristic 
qualities  of  things  and  people  so  as  to  be  able 
to  set  out  a  train  of  consequences.  A  celebrated 
novelist  was  once  congratulated  upon  the  ad- 
mirable drawing  in  one  of  her  books  of  a 
particular  school  of  Dissenters,  and  she  was 
asked  what  opportunities  she  had  enjoyed  of 
studying  them.  Her  reply  was  that  she  had 
once  caught  sight  of  a  group  of  them  through 
a  half-opened  door  as  she  mounted  a  staircase. 


12  Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry. 

That  is  no  doubt  an  extreme  case,  but  it  is  all 
the  more  useful  as  an  illustration.  It  helps  us 
to  realize  how  potent  a  faculty  is  the  endow- 
ment of  the  dramatist,  which  can  pierce  through 
human  appearance  to  its  essential  qualities,  can 
conceive  by  a  sure  instinct  how,  in  given  circum- 
stances, the  given  character  must  act,  and  can 
represent  it  to  us,  because  it  is  vivid  to  him,  in 
all  the  verisimilitude  of  essential  detail.  Such 
imagination  is  plainly  one  large  and  special  side 
of  the  faculty  of  seeing  things  out  of  their 
commonplace  associations.  As  a  branch  of  the 
same  head  would  rank  the  still  rarer  power  of 
conceiving  types  of  character,  that  for  certain 
reasons  have  no  actual  existence  in  the  world 
we  know,  such  types  as  Shakespeare's  Ariel  and 
Caliban  and  Puck. 

(d)  The  word  imagination  is  also  used  of 
a  faculty  which  may  at  first  sight  seem  the 
opposite  of  this — a  faculty  of  seeing  people  and 
objects  not  as  they  are  in  themselves,  but 
coloured  by  the  atmosphere  of  joy  or  gloom 


Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry.    13 

through  which  they  are  seen.  The  truth,  how- 
ever, probably  is  that  nothing  at  all  is,  or  ever 
can  be,  seen  out  of  some  atmosphere,  a  thing 
in  itself  being  merely  an  abstraction  ;  but  the 
greater  a  poet  is,  the  more  various  are  his  moods, 
while  with  lesser  men  a  particular  mood  may 
cover  all  the  objects  in  their  poetical  world. 

(e)  Again,  the  word  has  a  narrower  and 
more  technical  sense  ;  namely,  the  power  of 
detecting  resemblances  in  nature  for  the  purpose 
of  poetical  illustration.  This  use  of  the  term 
is  not  merely  freakish,  but  connects  with  that 
broader  and  more  fundamental  sense  to  which 
I  have  so  many  times  referred,  the  power  and 
habit  of  seeing  the  "  common  things  that  round 
us  lie"  out  of  their  commonplace  associations, 
of  seeing  them  in  more  subtle  and  original 
associations.  For  it  is  the  power  of  bringing 
together  two  objects  or  events  that  the  ordinary 
person  would  never  dream  of  connecting,  but  in 
which  the  poet's  eye  has  detected  similarity,  and 
which  he  therefore  places  side  by  side  so  that 


14  Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry. 

one  may  throw  light  upon  the  other.  Our 
thinking,  it  will  be  admitted,  is  largely  asso- 
ciational ;  one  thing  recalls  another ;  but  it  is 
the  prerogative  of  poets  that  the  tracks  between 
idea  and  idea  in  their  minds  are  not  those  of 
common  trade.  Recur  for  a  moment  to  Wither's 
reference  to  a  daisy.  We  know  beforehand 
what  a  daisy  will  suggest  to  a  child,  what  to 
a  gardener,  what  to  a  botanist;  we  do  not  know 
beforehand  what  it  will  suggest  to  a  poet.  It 
may  suggest,  as  it  did  to  Chaucer,  a  crowned 
queen : — 

"A  fret  of  gold  she  hadde  next  her  hair, 
And  upon  that  a  white  corown  she  bare 
With  flourouns  smalle,  and  (I  shall  not  lie) 
For  all  the  world  right  as  a  daisy 
Ycrowned  is  with  white  leaves  light, 
So  were  the  flourouns  of  her  corown  white." 

How  utterly  different  from  this  is  the  vision 
of  Burns !  To  him  the  daisy  is  the  type  of 
humble  cheerfulness,  sweet  neighbour  and  meet 
companion  of  the  humble  and  cheerful  lark. 
How  different,  again,  was  the  feeling  it  in- 


Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry.   15 

spired  in  Wordsworth !  The  point  to  strike 
home  to  him  was  the  touch  of  kinship  between 
the  simplest  flower  and  man  in  the  fact  that 
both  are  alive : 

"  Sweet  silent  creature 
That  breath'st  with  me  in  sun  and  air." 

Imagination,  used  in  this  restricted  sense  of 
the  interpretation  of  phenomena  by  comparison, 
is  often  contrasted  with  a  weaker  form  of  itself 
to  which  the  name  of  Fancy  is  given.  The 
distinction  was  introduced  into  these  islands 
by  Coleridge,  from  whom  it  was  borrowed  by 
Wordsworth ;  it  was  then  popularized  by  Leigh 
Hunt  and  afterwards  by  Ruskin.  It  has  played 
in  the  last  half  century  so  prominent  a  part 
in  the  criticism  of  poetry,  that  it  is  perhaps 
worth  while  to  look  it  for  once  fairly  in  the 
face.  Coleridge  was  always  promising  to  give 
a  disquisition  upon  Poetical  Imagination,  but 
he  never  kept  his  word  ;  he  did,  however,  what 
was  almost  better ;  in  the  Biographia  Literaria 
he  illustrated  his  meaning  from  some  passages 


1 6  Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry. 

in  his  friend's  poems ;  and  we  gather  from  his 
comments  that  he  did  not  at  all  mean  Imagi- 
nation to  be  distinguished  from  Fancy  as  the 
perception  of  deeper  from  that  of  more  super- 
ficial resemblances ;  he  wished  the  term  Fancy 
to  be  kept  for  the  use  of  poetical  imagery  of  all 
kinds,  and  the  term  Imagination  to  be  used  of 
the  poet's  faculty  as  a  creative  artist.  He  speaks 
of  it  as  a  unifying  power,  bringing  together 
whatever  will  help  his  purpose,  and  rejecting 
all  that  is  impertinent  and  unessential.  He 
speaks  of  it  also  as  a  vivifying  power,  turning 
"bodies  to  spirits  by  sublimation  strange."  That 
is  to  say  he  uses  Imagination  not  so  much  of 
a  quality  of  the  poet's  mind  as  of  an  artistic 
power  which  he  exercises,  the  power  of  im- 
posing living  form  upon  dead  matter, — he  calls 
it  in  the  Ode  to  Dejection  "  my  shaping  spirit 
of  imagination"; — but  it  is  not  hard  to  see 
that  this  unifying  and  vitalizing  power  depends 
upon  what  is  the  characteristic  essence  of  imagi- 
nation, the  unanalyzable  power  of  seeing  things 


Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry.    17 

freshly  and  in  new  and  harmonious  associations. 
The  idea  must  precede  the  execution,  and  it  is 
a  small  matter  whether  the  term  Imagination 
be  employed  of  the  idea  or  the  embodiment. 
Between  Imagination  and  Fancy,  therefore,  as 
Coleridge  conceived  them,  there  could  be  no 
confusion. 

The  trouble  began  with  Wordsworth.  By 
Imagination,  as  by  Fancy,  Wordsworth  prac- 
tically means  the  use  of  poetical  imagery ;  but 
he  ascribes  to  the  higher  faculty  the  images 
which  occur  to  the  poet  not  in  his  superficial 
moods,  but  under  the  influence  of  deeper  emo- 
tion1. Leigh  Hunt  preserved  and  illustrated 
this  distinction  from  a  wide  range  of  poets. 

1  Characteristically  Wordsworth,  in  his  celebrated  preface, 
illustrated  what  he  meant  by  Imagination,  not  from  his  friend's 
poetry,  but  his  own.  Upon  the  line  "  Over  his  own  sweet  voice 
the  stock-dove  broods,"  he  thus  comments :  "  The  stock-dove  is 
said  to  coo,  a  sound  well  imitating  the  note  of  the  bird  ;  but  by 
the  intervention  of  the  metaphor  broods,  the  affections  are  called 
in  by  the  imagination  to  assist  in  marking  the  manner  in  which 
the  bird  reiterates  and  prolongs  her  soft  note,  as  if  herself  de- 
lighting to  listen  to  it,  and  participatory  of  a  still  and  quiet 
satisfaction,  like  that  which  may  be  supposed  inseparable  from 
the  continuous  process  of  incubation." 

B.  2 


1 8  Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry. 

Mr  Ruskin,  in  the  second  volume  of  Modern 
Painters  (p.  163),  turned  aside  from  an  elaborate 
disquisition  upon  Imagination  in  painting  to 
speak  of  poetry.  "  The  Fancy,"  he  says,  "  sees 
the  outside,  and  so  is  able  to  give  a  portrait 
of  the  outside,  clear,  brilliant,  and  full  of  detail ; 
the  Imagination  sees  the  heart  and  inner  nature, 
and  makes  them  felt,  but  is  often  obscure, 
mysterious,  and  interrupted  in  its  giving  of 
outer  detail."  And  then  follows  a  remarkable 
parallel  between  the  flower  passage  in  Lycidas 
and  that  in  the  Winter's  Tale,  greatly  to  the 
disadvantage  of  the  former. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  the  passage 
from  Lycidas  is  printed  with  marginal  notes, 
as  follows : — 

"Bring  the  rathe  primrose   that 

forsaken  dies,  Imagination. 

The  tufted  crow-toe,  and   pale 

jessamine,  Nugatory. 

The  white  pink,  and  the  pansy 

freaked  with  jet,  Fancy. 

The  glowing  violet,  Imagination. 

The  musk-rose,  and  the  well- 

attii-'d  woodbine,  Fancy  and  -vulgar. 


Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry.   19 

With  cowslips  wan  that  hang 

the  pensive  head,  Imagination. 

And  every  flower  that  sad  em- 
broidery wears."  Mixed. 

Then    follows   the   passage   from    the    Winter's 

Tale  :— 

"  O  Proserpina, 

For  the  flowers  now,  that,  frighted,  thou  let'st  fall 
From  Dis's  waggon  !    daffodils, 
That  come  before  the  swallow  dares,  and  take 
The  winds  of  March  with  beauty  ;   violets,  dim, 
But  sweeter  than  the  lids  of  Juno's  eyes, 
Or  Cytherea's  breath  ;   pale  primroses, 
That  die  unmarried,  ere  they  can  behold 
Bright  Phoebus  in  his  strength,  a  malady 
Most  incident  to  maids." 

And  then  comes  this  criticism  : 

"  Observe  how  the  imagination  in  these  last  lines  goes 
into  the  very  inmost  soul  of  every  flower,  after  having 
touched  them  all  at  first  with  that  heavenly  timidness, 
the  shadow  of  Proserpine's,  and  gilded  them  with  celestial 
gathering,  and  never  stops  on  their  spots  or  their  bodily 
shape  ;  while  Milton  sticks  in  the  stains  upon  them  and 
puts  us  off  with  that  unhappy  freak  of  jet  in  the  very 
flower  that,  without  this  bit  of  paper-staining,  would  have 
been  the  most  precious  to  us  of  all.  '  There  is  pansies, 
that's  for  thoughts.' " 

I  do  not  know  whether  this  comparison  has 
ever  been  the  subject  of  adverse  comment :  I 
have  often  heard  it  praised.  To  me,  I  confess, 

2 — 2 


2o  Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry. 

it  seems  a  compendium  of  all  the  faults  that 
a  critic  of  poetry  should  avoid  :  waywardness, 
preciosity,  inattention,  and  the  uncritical  use  of 
critical  labels.  In  the  first  place  the  critic  has 
ignored  what  is  of  the  first  consequence,  the 
motive  of  the  two  pieces,  and  has  treated  them 
as  parallel  flower-passages  from  a  volume  of 
elegant  extracts ;  whereas  no  criticism  can  be  to 
the  point  that  does  not  recognize  that  Milton's 
flowers  are  being  gathered  for  a  funeral,  and 
Shakespeare's  are  not  to  be  gathered  at  all ; 
they  are  visionary  spring  flowers,  seen  in  glory 
through  the  autumn  haze.  Without  going  at 
length  through  each  passage  it  is  worth  noticing 
that  Shakespeare's  lines  about  the  primrose  are 
open  to  precisely  the  same  censure,  no  more 
and  no  less,  as  Mr  Ruskin  accords  to  Milton's 
pansy.  The  epithet  "pale"  is  very  far  from 
"  going  into  the  very  inmost  soul "  of  the  prim- 
rose, which  is  a  hardy  flower,  and  not  in  the 
least  anaemic  ;  it  "  sticks  in  the  stains "  upon 
the  surface  as  much  as  the  "freaked  with  jet"; 


Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry.    2 1 

and  this,  again,  so  far  from  being  "  unhappy," 
gives  the  reason  why  the  pansy  was  chosen  for 
the  hearse  among  the  flowers  that  "sad  em- 
broidery wear."  A  second  point  to  notice  con- 
cerns the  lines  that  are  marked  "  nugatory." 
Both  Shakespeare  and  Milton  had  the  instinct 
to  see  that  just  as,  on  the  one  hand,  a  flower- 
passage  must  not  be  a  mere  catalogue,  so,  on 
the  other,  each  item  must  not  be  unduly  em- 
phasized. And  so  we  find  that,  while  Milton 
has  his  "  tufted  crow-toe  and  pale  jessamine," 
and  his  "  well-attir'd  woodbine  "  to  make  up  the 
bunch,  Shakespeare  also  has  his 

"  Bold  oxlips,  and 

The  crown-imperial,  lilies  of  all  kinds, 
The  flower-de-luce  being  one  !  " 

a  "nugatory"  passage  which  Mr  Ruskin  omits 
from  his  quotation.  So  much,  then,  for  the 
contrast  of  Imagination  and  Fancy,  which 
critics  might  now  be  content  to  let  die. 

In  resuming  what  has  been  said  about  the 
two  great  characteristics  of  the  poetical  mind, 


22  Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry. 

its  passion  and  its  imagination,  it  may  be  useful 
to  illustrate  from  the  picture  that  our  great 
dramatist  has  drawn  of  the  poetical  character 
in  the  person  of  Macbeth.  Macbeth,  indeed, 
was  a  poet  without  a  conscience ;  but  that  cir- 
cumstance is  to  the  advantage  of  our  illustration, 
since  we  shall  not  be  able  to  confuse  his  morality 
with  his  poetry.  There  are  several  points  that 
may  be  noticed. 

1.  First,  though  on  this  much  stress  must 
not   be   laid,   we   observe    Macbeth's   power  of 
summoning   up,   and   vividly   objectifying    im- 
pressions   of    sense.       He    sees    an    air-drawn 
dagger.     He    hears    a    voice    say,    "  Sleep    no 
more." 

2.  Secondly,  and   this    is   fundamental,  we 
remark  the  passionate  intensity  with  which  he 
realizes    whatever   comes    before   him,  his    own 
states  of  mind,  or  events  that  happen,  and  sees 
them    in  all   their  attendant  circumstances  and 
consequences.     No  fact  that  at  all  interests  him 
remains  a   barren   fact  to   him,   and  most  facts 


Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry.   23 

do  interest  him.  When  he  is  contemplating  the 
death  of  Duncan  he  appreciates  thoroughly  and 
entirely  all  that  is  involved  in  that  death  : — 

"  He's  here  in  double  trust : 
First,  as  I  am  his  kinsman,  and  his  subject, 
Strong  both  against  the  deed  ;   then,  as  his  host, 
Who  should  against  his  murderer  shut  the  door, 
Not  bear  the  knife  myself.     Besides,  this  Duncan 
Hath  borne  his  faculties  so  meek,  hath  been 
So  clear  in  his  great  office,  that  his  virtues 
Will  plead  like  angels,  trumpet-tongued,  against 
The  deep  damnation  of  his  taking-off." 

So  he  goes  from  point  to  point,  realizing  as 
he  goes.  Even  more  striking  is  the  way  in 
which  he  is  moved  after  the  murder  by  Duncan's 
untroubled  condition,  thoroughly  appreciating 

it:— 

"  Duncan  is  in  his  grave  ; 
After  life's  fitful  fever,  he  sleeps  well  ; 
Treason  has  done  his  worst  :  nor  steel,  nor  poison, 
Malice  domestic,  foreign  levy,  nothing, 
Can  touch  him  further  !  " 

Or  consider  the  passage  at  the  end  of  the  play, 
where  he  is  contemplating  his  own  deserted 
state : — 

"  I  have  liv'd  long  enough ;   my  way  of  life 
Is  fall'n  into  the  sear,  the  yellow  leaf; 


24  Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry. 

And  that  which  should  accompany  old  age, 
As  honour,  love,  obedience,  troops'  of  friends, 
I  must  not  look  to  have  ;   but,  in  their  stead, 
Curses,  not  loud,  but  deep,  mouth-honour,  breath, 
Which  the  poor  heart  would  fain  deny,  but  dare  not." 

Especially  characteristic  here  of  the  poet  seems 
to  me  the  pause  on  the  idea  of  curses,  to  realize 
them,  before  going  further,  "  curses,  not  loud,  but 


3.  In  the  third  place,  we  remark  that,  as 
Macbeth  realizes  with  such  vividness  and  such 
emotion  the  qualities  of  everything  that  appeals 
to  him,  so  one  thing  is  always  suggesting  another 
with  similar  qualities  :  — 

"  Then  comes  my  fit  again  ;    I  had  else  been  perfect  ; 
Whole  as  the  marble,  founded  as  the  rock, 
As  broad  and  general  as  the  casing  air  ; 
But  now  I  am  cabin'd.  cribb'd,  confined." 

When  the  ghostly  voice  that  he  hears,  the  echo 
of  his  own  imaginative  mind,  suggests  to  him 
the  terrible  thought  that  he  has  murdered  not 
the  king  only,  but  Sleep,  the  greatest  friend  of 
man,  he  is  at  once  absorbed  in  the  thought  of 
all  the  wonder  and  mystery  of  sleep,  which  he 


Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry.   25 

draws  out  into  a  long  string  of  images  ;  for- 
getting all  about  the  business  he  had  been 
engaged  in,  and  the  bloody  daggers  in  his  hand, 
until  his  practical  wife  in  blank  amazement 
breaks  in  with,  "  What  do  you  mean  ?  "  No  one, 
again,  is  likely  to  forget  the  desolate  images 
under  which  he  sums  up  his  idea  of  the  worth- 
lessness  and  meaninglessness  of  human  life  : 

"  Life's  but  a  walking  shadow  ;  a  poor  player, 
That  struts  and  frets  his  hour  upon  the  stage, 
And  then  is  seen  no  more  :    it  is  a  tale 
Told  by  an  idiot,  full  of  sound  and  fury, 
Signifying  nothing." 

4.  I  would  point  out,  further,  as  a  frequent 
trait  of  the  poetic  nature,  Macbeth's  simplicity  ; 
shown  partly  by  his  interest  in  his  own  moods  ; 
for  example,  in  such  sayings  as  "  False  face 
must  hide  what  the  false  heart  doth  know " ; 
more  curiously  in  his  speculation  why  he  could 
not  say  "Amen  "  when  the  groom  he  was  about 
to  murder  said,  "God  bless  us";  most  curiously 
in  his  irritation  at  ghost-walking: — 

"  The  times  have  been 
That,  when  the  brains  were  out,  the  man  would  die, 


26  Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry. 

And  there  an  end  ;   but  now  they  rise  again, 
With  twenty  mortal  murders  on  their  crowns, 
And  push  us  from  our  stools  ;   this  is  more  strange 
Than  such  a  murder  is." 

5.  Finally,  though  in  this  I  am  trespassing 
on  a  subject  which  I  hope  to  discuss  in  a  second 
lecture,  we  cannot  but  observe  Macbeth's  extra- 
ordinary talent  for  expression.  I  will  give  but 
one  instance.  Shakespeare,  whether  by  design 
or  chance,  has  reserved  for  him  what  is,  perhaps, 
the  most  remarkable  presentment  in  literature  of 
the  phenomenon  of  falling  night — 

"  Light  thickens," 

an  expression  which  gives  not  only  the  fact  of 
growing  darkness,  but  also  its  qualities. 

The  picture  of  the  poetical  nature  that 
Shakespeare  has  given  us  in  Macbeth  is  con- 
siderably heightened  if  by  the  side  of  it  we  add 
for  contrast  his  Richard  II.  Without  working 
out  the  parallel  in  any  detail,  it  will  be  enough 
to  call  attention  to  two  points.  In  the  first 
place,  Richard  has  no  imagination  in  the  sense 
which  we  have  seen  reason  to  give  to  that  term  ; 


Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry.  27 

he  has  no  intuition  into  the  scope  and  meaning 
and  consequences  of  human  actions.  Compare, 
for  instance,  with  Macbeth's  picture  of  old  age, 
Richard's  picture  of  a  dethroned  king : — 

"  I'll  give  my  jewels  for  a  set  of  beads, 
My  gorgeous  palace  for  a  hermitage  ; 
My  gay  apparel  for  an  almsman's  gown, 
My  figured  goblets  for  a  dish  of  wood  ; 
My  sceptre  for  a  palmer's  walking  staff, 
My  subjects  for  a  pair  of  carved  saints  ; 
And  my  large  kingdom  for  a  little  grave,"  &c. 

The  points  in  the  picture  which  rouse  Richard's 
emotion,  and  which  he  sets  out  before  us,  are 
all  merely  superficial ;  never  once  does  he  touch 
the  real  heart  of  the  matter.  The  other  notice- 
able thing  is  that  Richard  is  much  less  interested 
in  persons  or  events  than  in  his  feelings  about 
them,  and  then  only  in  such  as  are  lamentable; 
and  perhaps,  it  would  be  true  to  add,  less  in  the 
lamentable  feelings  than  in  the  pathetic  language 
in  which  they  can  be  expressed.  He  "  hammers 
out "  a  simile  as  though  it  was  an  end  in  itself, 
and  is  moved  by  a  curious  phrase  so  as  almost 
to  forget  his  troubles.  In  the  coronation  scene, 


28  Passion  and  Imagination  in  Poetry. 

after  Richard  has  cast  down  the  looking-glass 
with  the  words, 

"  How  soon  my  sorrow  hath  destroyed  my  face," 

Bolingbroke,  with  all  a  practical  man's  contempt 
of  play-acting  and  rhetoric,  satirically  replies  : — 

"  The  shadow  of  your  sorrow  hath  destroyed 
The  shadow  of  your  face," 

whereupon  Richard  is  at  once  arrested  : — 

"  Say  that  again  ! 
The  shadow  of  my  sorrow  !    ha  !    let's  see  !  " 

Could  there  be    a   more  vivid  portrait   of  the 
"  minor  poet  "  or  sentimentalist  ? 


EXPRESSION    IN    POETRY. 

IN  the  foregoing  lecture  I  ventured  an  attempt 
to  investigate  the  constant  qualities  of  the 
poetical  mind  ;  in  this  I  wish  to  consider  what 
are,  speaking  generally,  the  means  at  the  poet's 
disposal  for  conveying  his  passion  and  his 
imaginative  vision  to  his  hearers.  For  of  poets, 
as  of  the  rest  of  us,  it  may  be  said  that — 

"if  our  virtues 

Did  not  go  forth  of  us,  'twere  all  alike 
As  if  we  had  them  not." 

A  "mute"  Milton  would  certainly  be  "inglori- 
ous"; he  would  also  be  useless:  would  he  be 
conceivable  ?  Undoubtedly  we  can  distinguish 
in  thought  the  divine  vision  from  the  divine 
faculty  which  gives  it  expression,  but  is  this 


30  Expression  in  Poetry. 

distinction  anything  more  than  logical  ?  May 
not  the  truth  be  that  a  poet  expresses  more 
than  the  rest  of  the  world  because  he  sees 
more,  and  like  the  rest  of  the  world  can  ex- 
press up  to  the  limit  of  his  vision  ?  Our  tutors 
and  governors,  when  we  were  children,  used  to 
receive  with  well-grounded  suspicion  our  not 
infrequent  excuse  for  muteness,  "  I  know,  but 
I  can't  explain";  and  it  is  equally  probable 
that  in  poets  the  vision  brings  its  own  inter- 
pretative faculty.  It  is  beyond  dispute  that 
the  poets  who  have  had  the  finest  things  to 
say  are  those  who  have  said  them  most  finely. 
If  we  take  those  passages  which  Matthew  Arnold 
once  suggested  as  touchstones  of  high  poetic 
quality,  and  attempt  to  distinguish  in  them  what 
is  form  from  what  is  substance,  we  shall  find  the 
task  impossible. 

"  Wilt  thou  upon  the  high  and  giddy  mast 
Seal  up  the  ship  boy's  eyes,  and  rock  his  brains 
In  cradle  of  the  rude,  imperious  surge?  ..." 

Is  there  here  one  word  not  necessary  for  the 


Expression  in  Poetry.  31 

picture  it  presents,  one  epithet  we  could  obelize 
as  inserted  in  the  interests  of  mere  style  ? 
"High"  is  not  enough  without  "giddy,"  be- 
cause the  poet  wishes  to  suggest  the  incredi- 
bleness,  from  a  landsman's  point  of  view,  of 
sleep  under  such  conditions  ;  "  rude  "  and  "  im- 
perious "  are  both  required  to  suggest  the  power 
of  sleep  which  can  ignore  so  savage  a  tyrant, 
nay,  use  him  for  her  purposes,  for  it  is  the 
tossing  that  rocks  the  boy  to  sleep.  We  may 
then  lay  it  down  that,  just  as  when  we  have 
reached  our  maturity  and  have  something  to 
say,  the  contents  of  our  mind  are,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  conveyed  into  our  language  with  no 
appreciable  loss,  so  that  what  we  say  is  a 
faithful  transcription  of  what  we  think,  and  our 
friends  are  seldom  at  a  loss  for  our  meaning ; 
so  the  poet's  mood,  by  an  even  surer  instinct, 
chooses  for  itself  language  which  effectually 
conveys  his  passion  or  imaginative  vision. 
The  mystery  in  the  relation  of  poetical  vision 
to  poetical  expression  is  the  prime  mystery  of 


32  Expression  in  Poetry. 

all  human  speech ;  it  is  a  mystery,  and  we 
cannot  get  behind  it ;  but  it  is  not  greater  in 
the  case  of  poets  than  with  ordinary  men  and 
women.  The  great  difference,  from  which  all 
else  depends,  lies  behind  expression,  in  the 
texture  of  the  poet's  thought  and  feeling.  I 
know  that  it  is  the  fashion  of  the  moment  to 
make  more  of  the  distinction  between  artist 
and  amateur  than  of  that  between  poet  and 
poetaster.  I  am,  however,  not  denying  that 
the  poet  is  an  artist.  The  instinct  I  speak  of 
is  an  artistic  instinct.  Nor  would  I  deny  that 
every  poet  must  serve  an  apprenticeship  to  his 
art,  and  improve  by  practice  his  gift  of  ex- 
pression. It  is  to  be  hoped  that  even  those 
of  us  who  talk  prose  improve  by  practice.  My 
contention  is  merely  that  when  the  poem  is 
written  and  before  us,  it  will  take  rank,  suppos- 
ing it  to  be  a  true  poem,  by  the  thing  said,  and 
that  it  will  be  found  impossible  to  distinguish 
the  substance  from  the  form.  A  very  simple 
consideration  will  show  the  truth  of  this  position. 


Expression  in  Poetry.  33 

Why  is  it  that  the  Idylls  of  the  King  and  the 
In  Memoriam  contain  so  many  passages  that 
the  world  will  quite  willingly  let  die  ?  If  the 
chief  thing  in  poetry  were  the  style,  one  part 
of  these  poems  would  be  as  good  as  another, 
for  the  style  is  uniform  throughout.  The  answer, 
in  all  such  cases,  is  that  "  soul  is  form  and  doth 
the  body  make."  What  is  wanting  in  the  weak 
places  of  these  great  poems  is  the  soul,  the 
poetic  vision  and  enthusiasm,  the  absence  of 
which  no  style  can  compensate. 

That  being  premised,  we  may  go  on  to  con- 
sider the  most  general  means  which  the  poet 
does,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  employ  to  convey  to 
us  his  emotion. 

i.  Poetry  is  essentially  passionate,  and  its 
passion  requires  a  heightened  mode  of  ex- 
pression. In  our  literature  this  is  supplied  by 
metre.  At  its  lowest,  metre  is,  what  Coleridge 
called  it,  "  a  stimulant  of  the  attention."  At 
the  very  least,  it  cuts  off  what  is  said  from 
ordinary  surroundings  and  raises  it  to  an  ideal 

B.  3 


34  Expression  in  Poetry. 

plane ;  so  that  if  what  is  said  in  metre  be 
commonplace,  its  commonplaceness  becomes  at 
once  more  apparent.  Hence  bad  verse  is  more 
intolerable  than  bad  prose.  But  further,  metre 
being  not  only  rhythm  but  regulated  rhythm, 
it  is  excellently  adapted  as  a  medium  for  poetry, 
which  is  not  only  emotion  but,  as  Wordsworth 
said,  "recollected  emotion";  not  wild  passion, 
but  passion  conceived  of  as  something  in  itself 
precious,  which  the  poet  wishes  to  impart  to 
others.  The  poet  desires  to  rouse  not  any 
emotion,  but  some  one  emotion  in  particular. 
Hence  various  emotions  find  their  fit  expression 
in  appropriate  metres.  It  is  not  by  idle  chance 
or  mere  caprice  that  Paradise  Lost  is  written 
in  iambic  verse  and  Shelley's  Ode  to  a  Skylark 
in  trochaics.  Even  in  metres  which  appear  to 
be  least  bound  by  rule,  such  as  the  choruses 
in  Samson  Agonistes,  it  will  be  found  on  in- 
vestigation that  a  reason  underlies  the  apparent 
vagary.  It  is  with  these  rhythms  as  with  the 
wheels  in  Ezekiel's  vision :  "  To  the  place 


Expression  in  Poetry.  35 

whither  the  head    looked  they  followed  it,  for 
the  spirit  of  a  living  creature  was  in  them." 

But  although  every  poem  must  be  written 
not  in  rhythm  only,  but  in  metre,  it  is  possible 
while  preserving  the  framework  of  metre  to  vary 
the  rhythm  by  changes  in  pause  and  accent. 
Hood's  Eugene  Aram  and  Rossetti's  Blessed 
Damosel  are  written  in  the  same  metre,  but  the 
differences  in  rhythm  are  so  great  that  the  one 
poem  never  for  a  moment  suggests  the  other. 
Similarly  Tennyson's  blank  verse  does  not  re- 
call Milton's.  And  within  the  same  poem  a 
writer  will  vary  his  rhythm,  partly  for  the  sake 
of  the  variety,  but  also  in  order  to  produce 
special  effects.  Some  such  effects  are  fairly 
obvious  and  will  be  found  generalised  in  ancient 
and  modern  treatises,  like  Horace's  Ars  Poetica 
and  Pope's  Essay  on  Criticism  : — 

"  When  Ajax  strives  some  rock's  vast  weight  to  throw 
The  line  too  labours  and  the  words  move  slow,  &c." 

Other  effects  can  only  be  recognized  when  the 
poet's  artistic  sense  has  achieved  them.     Thus 

3—2 


36  Expression  in  Poetry. 

in  Tennyson's  Idylls  of  the  King,  we  have,  on 
the  ground-plan  of  his  unrhymed  five-accent 
line,  effects  as  markedly  different  as  the  follow- 
ing, in  each  of  which  the  rhythm  helps  to 
express  the  action  described  :— 

"  So  dark  a  forethought  roll'd  about  his  brain, 
As  on  a  dull  day  in  an  Ocean  cave 
The  blind  wave  feeling  round  his   long  sea-hall 
In  silence." 

"  Gareth  loosed  the  stone 
From  off  his  neck ;   then  in  the  mere  beside 
Tumbled  it;   oilily  bubbled  up  the  mere." 

Almost  any  page  of  Paradise  Lost  will  supply 
examples  of  greater  or  less  subtlety.  There  is 
an  easy  contrast  for  instance  between  the  de- 
scription of  Satan's  mounting  to  the  roof  of 
Hell,  where  the  rhythm  is  almost  dactylic  : — 

"  Some  times 

He  scours  the  right-hand  coast,  some  times  the  left, 
Now  shaves  with  level  wing  the  deep,  then  soars 
Up  to  the  fiery  concave,  towering  high." 

and  the  succession  of  strong  accents  in  the  de- 
scription of  his  flight  down  to  the  earth  from 
heaven : — 


Expression  in  Poetry.  37 

"Down  right  into  the  world's  first  region  throws 
His  flight  precipitant  and  winds  with  ease 
Through  the  pure  marble  air  his  oblique  ray 
Amongst  innumerable  stars," 

while  the  rhythm  follows  with  even  more  de- 
licate faithfulness  the  other  motions  described. 
2.  A  second  great  means  employed  by 
English  poetry  to  express  emotion  is  rhyme. 
Rhyme,  as  much  as  metre,  is  a  mode  of 
heightening  expression,  a  stimulant  to  the  at- 
tention. Attempts  have  been  made  from  time 
to  time  to  abandon  the  use  of  rhyme  alto- 
gether, as  a  relic  of  barbarism.  Campion,  who 
himself  used  rhyme  to  delightful  effect,  wrote 
a  treatise  to  prove  its  "  unaptness  for  poesy"; 
and  even  Milton  in  his  old  age  wrote  a  preface 
to  his  epic  in  which  he  disparaged  it,  not  only 
as  a  "  troublesome  bondage  in  heroic  poem," 
which  no  doubt  it  is ;  and  not  only  as  "  the 
invention  of  a  barbarous  age  to  set  off  wretched 
matter  and  lame  metre,"  as  perhaps  it  was  ;  but 
as  "  a  thing  of  itself  to  all  judicious  ears  trivial, 
and  of  no  true  musical  delight."  Thus  the 


38  Expression  in  Poetry. 

author  of  Paradise  Lost  turned  his  back  on 
the  author  of  Lycidas.  And  yet  still  later  in 
his  life  Milton's  true  poetic  instinct  once  more 
vindicated  rhyme  against  this  critical  judgment 
by  using  it  to  "  set  off  metre,"  that  was  far  from 
lame,  in  the  choruses  of  Samson. 

"  All  is  best,  though  we  oft  doubt 

What  th'  unsearchable  dispose 
Of  highest  wisdom  brings  about 

And  ever  best  found  in  the  close. 
Oft  he  seems  to  hide  his  face 

But  unexpectedly  returns, 
And  to  his  faithful  champion  hath  in  place 

Bore  witness  gloriously  whence  Gaza  mourns, 
And  all  that  band  them  to  resist 

His  uncontrollable  intent. 
His  servants  he  with  new  acquist 

Of  true  experience  from  this  great  event 
With  peace  and  consolation  hath  dismist 

And  calm  of  mind,  all  passion  spent." 

Is  the  rhyme  in  this  fine  passage  otiose  and 
trivial  ?  No  one  can  fail  to  observe  what  variety 
it  lends  to  the  chorus  by  ringing  the  changes 
on  all  the  chief  vowel  sounds,  or  how  it  marks 
sections  of  the  thought ;  first  the  text,  then  the 
illustration,  then  the  moral.  The  second  sec- 


Expression  in  Poetry.  39 

tion,  indeed,  runs  on  into  the  third  quatrain  of 
rhymes  ;  but  by  that  slight  irregularity  the  ode 
is  bound  together,  and  the  ear  kept  on  the  alert, 
until  the  full  close,  for  the  chime  that  is  sure  to 
come. 

3.  These  things,  then,  metre  and  rhyme, 
being  granted  to  the  poet  as  two  ingredients 
of  his  magic  cauldron,  by  means  of  which  he 
is  to  conjure  up  the  mood  or  scene  that  he 
desires  to  set  before  us,  we  come  to  the  third, 
his  use  of  words,  and  proceed  to  enquire  whether 
there  are  any  principles  governing  the  use  of 
language  peculiar  to  poetry.  Here  it  must  be 
remembered  that  all  a  critic  can  do  is  to  analyse 
more  or  less  successfully  what  methods  have 
actually  been  employed  by  this  poet  and  that 
for  the  production  of  their  effects.  There  is 
no  one  poetic  method,  just  as  there  is  no  sepa- 
rate poetic  vocabulary.  Every  new  poet  will 
achieve  his  new  result  in  a  new  way,  which  he 
will  find  the  easier  and  also  the  harder  for  the 
enterprise  of  his  predecessors.  There  are,  how- 


4O  Expression  in  Poetry. 

ever,  two  or  three  artistic  principles  of  universal 
application  which  call  for  notice.  The  first  is, 
that  the  poem  must  have  an  atmosphere  of  its 
own ;  or,  to  change  the  metaphor,  the  words 
must  be  all  in  the  same  key.  Now,  no  mere 
poetical  joinery  can  achieve  such  a  result  as 
this.  Unless  the  words  are  generated  by 
"  thoughts  that  breathe,"  they  will  have  no  life 
in  them,  and  no  natural  and  inevitable  relation 
to  each  other.  For  an  example,  take  a  quatrain 
from  Gray's  beautiful  sonnet  upon  his  friend 
West  :— 

"  These  ears,  alas  !    for  other  notes  repine ; 

A  different  object  do  these  eyes  require ; 
My  lonely  anguish  melts  no  heart  but  mine, 
And  in  my  breast  the  imperfect  joys  expire." 

These  lines  were  chosen  by  Wordsworth  in  his 
famous  Preface  to  point  the  moral  that  the 
language  of  poetry  differs  in  no  respect  from 
that  of  prose  when  it  is  well  written.  The 
moral  they  really  point  is  a  different  one.  Their 
tone  is  unique  ;  it  is  unlike  that  of  any  other 
elegy  in  the  language.  The  poet's  instinct  has 


Expression  in  Poetry.  41 

guided  him  securely  to  express  his  own  special 
emotion,  and  to  avoid  any  word  "  of  dissonant 
mood  from  his  complaint."  Whether  the  words 
might  be  classed  as  prosaic  or  poetical  he  has 
not  stopped  to  enquire.  If  a  poetaster  had  been 
writing  the  sonnet,  he  would  have  avoided  what 
would  have  seemed  to  him  so  tame  an  ex- 
pression as  "  the  imperfect  joys  expire."  But 
how  absolutely  right  it  is,  in  its  place  and  for 
its  purpose.  Again,  what  but  genius  could  have 
conceived  the  reticence  of  the  two  epithets 
"other"  and  "different"?  It  should  be  clear, 
then,  that  one  principle  governing  the  use  of 
words  in  poetry  is  that  every  poem  must  have 
an  atmosphere  of  its  own  ;  it  must  be  in  a 
definite  mode,  to  which  the  poet's  emotion  will 
guide  him  surely.  The  poet's  passion  may  be  any 
one  of  a  myriad  moods,  for  the  heart  of  man  is 
infinite,  and  the  special  quality  of  the  particular 
passion  will  show  itself  in  the  quality  of  the  words. 
We  shall  feel  it  in  them,  even  though  we  are  not 
able  to  describe  it.  When  people  say  "  this  is 


42  Expression  in  Poetry. 

genuine  poetry,"  what  they  often  mean  is  that 
a  passionate  mood  has  succeeded,  by  the  poet's 
instinct,  in  condensing  itself  into  words,  and  in 
reading  the  words  they  distinguish  the  passion. 
Consider,  for  a  second  example,  a  stanza  in 
Wordsworth's  Solitary  Reaper: — 

"  Will  no  one  tell  me  what  she  sings  ? 
Perhaps  the  plaintive  numbers  flow 
For  old,  unhappy,  far-off  things, 
And  battles  long  ago." 

If  we  take  these  lines  to  pieces,  we  may  be 
tempted  to  say  it  is  the  prosiest  verse  ever 
written  ;  "  old,"  "  unhappy,"  "  far-off,"  are  words 
of  an  everyday  vocabulary,  and  "  Will  no  one 
tell  me  what  she  sings?"  might  almost  occur 
in  any  drawing-room  conversation.  But  if  we 
are  content  not  to  take  the  passage  to  pieces, 
if  we  are  content  to  receive  it  and  let  it  make 
its  own  impression  as  a  whole,  we  must  acknow- 
ledge it  to  be  a  perfect  rendering  of  the  effect 
on  the  poet's  mind  of  the  wild,  vague,  sad 
Highland  music.  A  good  proof  of  poetical 


Expression  in  Poetry.  43 

adequacy   is   that   such    lines   cannot   be  para- 
phrased. 

It  is  an  interesting  experience  to  take  up 
a  Shakespeare  and  remark  how  the  speeches, 
apart  from  their  merely  grammatical  sense,  are 
all  pitched  in  a  certain  key,  and  make  on  us 
the  impression  of  a  definite  mood.  Take,  for 
an  instance,  the  familiar  lines  of  Demetrius  in 
A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  after  the  troubles 
and  misunderstandings  of  the  night  are  over  and 
he  is  looking  back  upon  them  : — 

"  These  things  seem  small  and  undistinguishable, 
Like  far-off  mountains  turned  into  clouds." 

The  mere  grammatical  sense,  if  the  words  were 
paraphrased,  would  not  be  striking,  but  the  words 
themselves  convey — who  can  tell  how?  —  the 
wondering  reverie  of  a  man  still  only  half 
awake*.  It  is  even  more  interesting  to  study 


*  It  is  noticeable  that  those  short  passages  in  which 
Shakespeare  describes  a  sunrise  all  take  colour  from  the  circum- 
stances of  the  dramatis  persona.  Shakespeare  has  not  a  pigeon- 
hole for  sunrises  from  which  he  draws  indiscriminately  at  need. 
To  the  ghost  in  Hamlet  the  morning  comes  as  the  twilight  of 


44  Expression  in  Poetry. 

with  the  same  view  the  pictures  of  landscape  in 
the  works  of  the  great  masters.  Landscape,  of 
course,  is  far  from  being  a  fixed  quantity.  The 
poet,  indeed,  paints  what  he  sees ;  but  that  means 
he  paints  what  he  sees  ;  and  in  painting  he  paints 
his  own  mood,  even  though  he  does  not  neces- 
sarily mean  to  do  so.  How  definite  is  the  mood 
of  the  concluding  passage  of  Keats'  Ode  to 
A  utumn : — 

"  Hedge-crickets  sing,  and  now,  with  treble  soft, 
The  redbreast  whistles  from  a  garden  croft, 
And  gathering  swallows  twitter  in  the  skies." 

The  tone  of  the  words  is  of  a  somewhat  meagre 
joy.  All  the  verbs  contain  the  vowel  i,  the 
thinnest  of  vowels.  The  poet  seems  to  say : 
"  The  glory  of  the  year  is  departing,  but  it  is 
not  yet  gone,  let  us  make  the  best  of  what 

night,  which  is  his  day,  and  so  he  expresses  it  by  reference  to  the 
paling  light  of  the  glow-worm : — 

"The  glow-worm  shews  the  matin  to  be  near, 
And  'gins  to  pale  his  uneffectual  fire." 

A  remarkable  contrast  to  the  lively  image  of  Horatio  : — 
"But  look,  the  morn  in  russet  mantle  clad 
Walks  o'er  the  dew  of  yon  high  eastern  hill ! " 


Expression  in  Poetry.  45 

remains."  He  does  not  say  that ;  he  gives  but 
a  hint  of  it  in  the  gathering  of  the  swallows, 
and  for  the  rest  sings  the  best  Jubilate  he  can. 
But  the  mood  is  unmistakable.  Contrast  with 
it  as  celebrated  a  picture  of  Autumn,  that  by 
Crabbe,  at  the  end  of  Delay  has  Danger: — 

"  He  saw  the  wind  upon  the  water  blow ; 
Far  to  the  left  he  saw  the  huts  of  men, 
Half  hid  in  mist  that  hung  upon  the  fen  ; 
Before  him  swallows,  gathering  for  the  sea, 
Took  their  short  flights,  and  twittered  on  the  lea ; 
And  near  the  bean-sheaf  stood,  the  harvest  done, 
And  slowly  blackened  in  the  sickly  sun." 

There  is  only  one  epithet  there  which  very 
definitely  fixes  the  key  of  the  passage,  the  epithet 
"sickly";  and  I  am  not  sure  that  it  does  not 
a  little  force  the  note,  and  spoil  the  harmony. 
Apart  from  that  there  is  nothing ;  and  yet  the 
mood  is  unmistakable.  It  is  a  mood  of  deep 
dejection.  You  can  hear  it  in  every  line,  even 
in  such  a  line  as 

"He  saw  the  wind  upon  the  water  blow," 
which  contains  no  epithet,  and  yet  makes  you 
shiver.      I  need  not,  perhaps,  further  illustrate 


46  Expression  in  Poetry. 

this  first  principle,  that  given  a  mood  of  emotion, 
it  can  and  will  find  means  of  expressing  itself 
unmistakably. 

It  may,  however,  be  well  to  illustrate  the 
fact  that  the  poet's  instinct  may  not  always 
secure  the  most  adequate  expression  at  the  first 
attempt.  In  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  there 
is  preserved  a  manuscript  of  certain  of  Milton's 
minor  poems  which  shows  that  he  achieved 
some  of  his  most  consummate  results  by  a  series 
of  experiments,  each  bringing  him  nearer  to  his 
goal.  One  of  the  most  marvellous  lines  in  the 
Comus  comes  in  a  passage  where  the  Lady  lost 
in  the  dark  wood  falls  a  prey  to  vague  midnight 
fancies,  and  says  : — 

"A  thousand  fantasies 
Begin  to  throng  into  my  memory 
Of  calling  shapes,  and  beckoning  shadows  dire, 
And  airy  tongues  that  syllable  men's  names 
On  sands  and  shores  and  desert  wildernesses." 

For  the  line  in  italics  Milton  had  originally 
written  "And  airy  tongues  that  lure  night- 
wanderers";  but  how  vastly  better  did  his 


Expression  in  Poetry.  47 

second  thoughts  convey  his  sense.  "Syllable" 
is  a  word  exquisitely  fitted  for  his  purpose. 
Being  pure  sound,  it  suggests  the  idea  of  words 
being  uttered  that  are  mere  sounds,  words  said 
by  "  airy  tongues "  with  no  intelligence  behind 
them,  words  said  clearly  and  carefully  as  by 
a  child  who  does  not  know  the  meaning  of  what 
he  is  saying.  The  manuscripts  of  Shelley  and 
Coleridge  tell  a  like  tale.  And  even  where 
manuscripts  are  not  to  be  had,  it  is  often  possible, 
by  comparing  the  several  editions  of  a  poem,  to 
see  how,  by  a  slight  touch  here  and  there,  the 
poet  has  succeeded  in  conveying  his  meaning 
to  us  more  perfectly.  Let  me  give  two  examples 
from  Tennyson.  In  the  first  edition  of  the 
Princess,  the  first  line  of  that  exquisite  song, 
"  Home  they  brought  her  warrior  dead,"  appeared 
as  "  Home  they  brought  him,  slain  with  spears." 
Clearly  the  poet  perceived  that  he  had  been 
trying  to  convey  too  much  :  the  kind  of  battle 
in  which  the  warrior  fell  was  really  unimportant 
for  his  purpose  ;  the  important  fact  was  the  fact 


48  Expression  in  Poetry. 

of  death.  So  he  moved  the  word  dead  to  the 
most  emphatic  place  in  the  line,  and  implied 
the  death  in  battle  by  the  word  warrior.  The 
other  example  I  would  adduce  is  the  first  line 
of  Tithonus,  which,  when  it  first  appeared  in  the 
Corn/till  Magazine,  ran  : — 

"Ay  me,  ay  me,  the  woods  decay  and  fall." 
This  was  subsequently  altered   into  its  present 
form, 

"The  woods  decay,  the  woods  decay,  and  fall," 
a  much  better  line  under  the  circumstances ; 
because  the  repetition  of  the  clause  "  the  woods 
decay "  creates  a  pause  before  the  words  "  and 
fall,"  which  are  the  words  of  most  emphasis,  and 
are  thus  thrown  into  greater  prominence.  Titho- 
nus,  too,  had  decayed,  like  the  leaves ;  unlike 
them,  he  could  not  come  altogether  to  an  end. 
It  is  interesting  also  to  notice  that  while  some 
poets  are  thus  able  to  recollect  their  emotion 
and  improve  by  revision  the  expression  of  it, 
others  totally  lack  this  power.  A  striking  in- 
stance was  William  Morris. 


Expression  in  Poetry.  49 

A    second    great    artistic    principle   in   the 
poetical  use  of  language  is  the  axiom  laid  down 
by  Coleridge  that  a  poet  should  "  paint  to  the 
imagination";  by  which  is  meant  that  the  poet 
should    never,  in   describing  objects,  labour  to 
accumulate  detail,  but  find  some  way  of  summon- 
ing up  his  picture  before  our  eyes  at  a  stroke. 
This  principle,  coming  from  a  poet,  reminds  one, 
to  compare  great  things  with  small,  of  the  ex- 
planations   given    by  conjurors  of  their  tricks. 
"  That,"  they  say,  "  is  how  it's  done."     How  to 
do  it  is  a  different  matter.     But  that  it  is  really 
done  so,  we  may  convince  ourselves  by  taking 
examples.     Matthew  Arnold  among  the  touch- 
stones of  poetry,  to  which  I  have  already  referred, 
included  those  lines  of  Milton  about  the  Rape  of 
Proserpine, 

"Which  cost  Ceres  all  that  pain 
To  seek  her  through  the  world." 

Who  but  a  poet  of  the  first  rank  would  have 

dared  that  simple  touch,  "  all  that  pain  " ;  how 

effective  it  is  upon  the  mind  of  the  instructed 

B.  4 


50  Expression  in  Poetry. 

reader,  for  whom  alone  Milton  wrote ;  what 
accumulation  of  epithet  could  produce  a  tenth 
part  of  the  effect  ?  Whatever  we  have  read  in 
old  poets  at  once  leaps  to  memory. 

This  principle  of  calling  in  the  reader's 
imagination  to  fill  out  the  poet's  outline  helps 
us  to  understand  why  poets  are  so  ready  to 
compare  one  thing  with  another.  The  process 
is  a  kind  of  hypnotism ;  the  poet  makes  a 
suggestion  and  the  reader  at  once  sees  the 
picture*.  A  simple  and  very  effective  instance 
is  Tennyson's  comparison  of  the  pallor  of  the 
wounded  King's  face  to  the  fading  moon — 

"All  his  face  was  white 
And  colourless,  and  like  the  wither'd  moon 
Smote  by  the  fresh  beam  of  the  springing  East." 

The  painting  of  landscape  in  the  poetry  of 

*  It  is  not  merely  physical  resemblances  that  are  best 
indicated  by  imagery.  Thoughts  and  sentiments  are  often 
poetically  enforced  by  a  comparison,  which  in  pure  reason  is  not 
to  the  point. 

' '  Weep  no  more,  nor  sigh,  nor  groan, 
Sorrow  calls  no  time  that's  gone; 
Violets  plucked  the  sweetest  rain 
Makes  not  fresh  or  grow  again." 


Expression  in  Poetry. 


this  century  owes  a  great  deal  to  this  illustrative 
method.  It  is  plain  that  the  most  painful  and 
literal  accuracy  could  not  give  the  picture  of 
autumn  leaves  driven  before  the  wind  so  fully 
and  effectively  as  Shelley's  fine  image — 

"  Like  ghosts  from  an  enchanter  fleeing," 

or  the  picture  of  the  sudden  thrusting  and 
thronging  of  spring  buds  in  hedgerows  and 
garden  beds  so  well  as  another  image  in  the 
same  poem — 

"  Driving  sweet  buds  like  flocks  to  feed  in  air." 

In  still  higher  poetry  we  may  see  the  principle 
at  work  in  such  a  piece  as  Shakespeare's  seventy- 
third  sonnet : — 

"  That  time  of  year  thou  mayst  in  me  behold, 

When  yellow  leaves,  or  none,  or  few,  do  hang 
Upon  those  boughs  which  shake  against  the  cold, — 

Bare,  ruin'd  choirs,  where  late  the  sweet  birds  sang. 
In  me  thou  see'st  the  twilight  of  such  day, 

As,  after  sunset,  fadeth  in  the  west, 
Which  by  and  by  black  night  doth  take  away, 

Death's  second  self,  that  seals  up  all  in  rest. 
In  me  thou  see'st  the  glowing  of  such  fire, 

That  on  the  ashes  of  his  youth  doth  lie, 

4—2 


52  Expression  in  Poetry. 

As  the  death-bed  whereon  it  must  expire, 

Consum'd   with   that  which  it  was  nourish'd  by. 
This  thou  perceiv'st,  which  makes  thy  love  more  strong, 
To  love  that  well,  which  thou  must  leave  ere  long." 

The  root-thought  in  this  sonnet  is  that  the 
coming  on  of  age  makes  the  friend's  love 
stronger,  because  the  time  is  short.  The  picture 
of  age  is  brought  before  us,  however,  not  directly, 
but  by  three  pictorial  comparisons  :  first,  to  the 
dying  of  the  year,  then  to  the  dying  of  each  day, 
then  to  the  dying  down  of  a  fire  ;  each  supplying 
some  vivid  detail  which  applies  with  special 
poignancy  to  the  lover's  case — and  the  first 
especially  reminding  us  by  reference  to  the 
"  ruined  choirs  "  that  the  aged  lover  is  also  the 
poet. 

In  conclusion,  it  may  be  noted  that  there 
are  certain  qualities  of  individual  words  of  which 
poets,  above  all  other  writers,  are  careful  to  take 
advantage.  The  poet  is  alive  to  the  associa- 
tions of  words.  In  the  line  quoted  above  from 
Gray, 

"A  different  object  do  these  eyes  require," 


Expression  in  Poetry.  53 


it  is   plain   that   the  word  require  is  used  with 
a  reminiscence  of  such  a  Virgilian  line  as 
"Amissos  longo  socios  sermone  requirmit" 

and  brings  with  it  the  wistfulness  of  the  Latin. 
Milton  and  Tennyson  are  especially  happy  in 
such  learned  use  of  words.  Further,  the  poet 
can,  and  constantly  does,  take  advantage  of  the 
actual  sound  of  the  words  themselves.  The 
device  of  alliteration  has  passed  in  English  from 
being  part  of  the  mechanism  of  all  poetry,  an 
initial  rhyme,  into  a  means  of  producing  special 
effects  ;  effects  as  various  as  the  quality  of  the 
several  letters.  It  needs  no  enforcing  that  in 
such  a  phrase  as  Milton's 

"  Behemoth,  biggest  born  of  earth," 

the  repeated  effort  to  form  the  labial  helps  the 
imagination  to  an  impression  of  bigness,  while  in 
another  line  of  his — 

"The  world  of  waters  wide  and  deep," 

or  "  wallowing  unwieldy,"  the  open  effect  of  the 
three  w's  helps  the  all-abroadness  of  the  idea. 


54  Expression  in  Poetry. 

So  liquids  minister  to  a  verse  of  their  liquidity, 
and  sibilants  can  soothe  a  verse  to  sleep  as  well 
as  a  child.  What  goes  commonly  by  the  name  of 
onomatopoeia  is  a  step  beyond  this.  Here  actual 
sounds  in  nature  are  more  or  less  suggested. 
Some  words,  such  as  murmuring,  are  themselves 
onomatopoeic  in  origin  ;  others  have  come  to  be 
so  by  chance,  or  are  compelled  into  such  service 
by  the  poet.  Examples  are  drizzling,  trickling, 
tumbling,  noise,  cry,  all  of  which  are  to  be  found 
in  the  stanza  of  the  Faerie  Queene  describing  the 
cave  of  Morpheus. 

"And  more  to  lull  him  in  his  slumber  soft, 
A  trickling  stream  from  high  rock  tumbling  down, 
And  ever-drizzling  rain  upon  the  loft, 
Mixt  with  a  murmuring  wind,  much  like  the  sown 
Of  swarming  bees,  did  cast  him  in  a  swoun ; 
No  other  noise,  nor  people's  troublous  cries, 
As  still  are  wont  to  annoy  the  walled  town, 
Might  here  be  heard ;  but  careless  Quiet  lies 
Wrapt  in  eternal  silence  far  from  enemies." 

Beyond  onomatopoeia,  again,  we  have  in  certain 
poets,  but  by  no  means  all,  the  power  of  sug- 
gesting by  words  not  sound  only  but  motion. 


Expression  in  Poetry.  55 

Keats  succeeds  occasionally  in  this  sort  of  cine- 
matographic effect,  e.g.,  in  his  description  of  a 
gust  of  wind  coming  and  going. 

"  Save  for  one  gradual  solitary  gust, 
Which  comes  upon  the  silence  and  dies  off 
As  if  the  ebbing  air  had  but  one  wave." 

Much  of  the  effect  of  this  passage  is  due  to  the 
emphatic  monosyllable  "  comes,"  which  gives 
the  impression  of  suddenness.  Keats  puts  it 
to  much  the  same  service  in  his  description  of 
the  moon  breaking  from  a  cloud.  And  much  of 
the  effect  of  Tennyson's  Crossing  the  Bar,  one 
of  his  most  admirable  pictures  of  motion,  depends 
upon  the  monosyllabic  verbs. 

"  May  there  be  no  moaning  of  the  bar 

When  I  put  out  to  sea, 
But  such  a  tide  as  moving  seems  asleep 

Too  full  for  sound  or  foam, 

When  that  which  drew  out  of  the  boundless  deep, 
Turns  again  home." 

I  will  conclude  with  a  passage,  written  by 
one  who  was  himself  a  master  of  the  poetic 
craft,  analysing  the  suggestiveness  of  the  sound 
effects  in  a  couplet  of  Coleridge's  Christabel: — 


56  Expression  in  Poetry. 

"The  brands  were  flat,  the  brands  were  dying, 
Amid  their  own  white  ashes  lying." 

"  Here  the  cold  vowels  a,  i,  o  are  the  only 
ones  which  are  openly  sounded,  and  of  these 
a  is  repeated  five  times,  and  i  three  times,  the 
e  in  the  short  the  preceding,  as  it  does,  the  long 
syllable  brand  is  scarcely  heard ;  the  ear  is 
wholly  occupied  with  the  eight  cold  vowels 
which  occur  in  the  long  syllables  of  the  eight 
feet  that  constitute  these  lines.  The  only  effect 
of  warmth  is  a  very  slight  one,  produced  by  the 
rapid  succession  of  the  consonants  b,  r  and  n,  d 
in  the  word  brand.  Again,  there  is  an  effect  of 
weight  conveyed  by  the  word  brand,  and  to  this 
effect  we  are  invited  to  attend,  by  the  repetition 
of  it,  and  by  the  first  juxtaposition  and  contrast 
of  this  word  with  other  words  conveying  the 
notion  of  softness  and  lightness :  finally  the 
two  ideas  of  lightness  and  weight  are  united, 
and  the  effect  completed  by  the  word  amid,  in 
which  the  sound  passing  through  the  soft  m  and 
its  indistinct  vowels,  concludes  in  a  heavy  d; 


Expression  in  Poetry.  57 

and  completes  to  a  delicate  ear  and  a  prepared 
mind,  the  entire  picture  of  the  weighty  and 
smouldering  brands,  sunken  through  the  light 
mass  of  ashes  which  remains  after  their  undis- 
turbed combustion*." 

*  Coventry  Patmore   in  a   review  of  Tennyson's  Princess, 
quoted  in  Patmore's  Life,  i.  106. 


CAMBRIDGE:  PRINTED  BY  j.  AND  c.  F.  CLAY,  AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS. 


38345 


